The Smell of Salt
by Winter M
Summary: Xander pays Spike a visit during the summer post The Gift.


Title: The Smell of Salt

Author: Winter M.

Rating: PG-ish

Pairing: X/S

Spoilers: takes place the summer after the Gift

Archive: LJ, Watermark, Want it? Just let me know where it's going.

Feedback: yes please :)

Summary: Xander pays Spike a visit.

A/N: So, a friend requested S/X smut about a … Err, couple weeks ago? And I've been trying, seriously, but the inspiration is just never there and this is all I can come up with. I really really tried but it just didn't want to go that way. hangs head me and my introspective plot, I just can't escape it, even when I try.

- - - -

For people like them, people who led the kind of lives they do, life is precious. It doesn't how many people—friends, family—you've lost and continue to loose over the years. It doesn't matter how many endless nights you spend walking the dark, cold, deserted streets dealing out deaths; because that is death to the death, or death to the unnatural, demonic, not human. It's not _life_ at all, or so you tell yourself. You have to believe it or it'll drive you nuts, thinking about all that pseudo life.

But _humanity_ that is something you come to cherish, your own if none other. People who led lives such as there's knew and understood better then most how easily it could be taken away. One moment you let your guard down, one moment your attention is caught by some flashy bit of sunshine and then someone else is gone forever. So they learned to hold onto their life and the life around them, desperately clutching at companions and prayed they'd be able to keep on being lucky and avoiding what was ultimately inevitable.

Some say that you never understand or realize how much someone means to you until they're gone, cold and buried and _dead_. He'd like to think that they are wrong, that _they_ at least know how much the others mean to them. That they knew how much she meant to them before she was taken away. And maybe they did, know they're own feelings at least, and maybe instead it was a dead—thing's—feelings which none anticipated or thought could truly be real and deep and whole.

He can't though understand how life could be precious to a creature like the vampire. It was in his very nature _not_ to hold it dear and close to his unbeating heart. So why did he? Because even he wasn't blind enough not to be able to tell how crushed the blonde had been that day beneath the tower as the sun had rose behind them, painting the earth a new rainbow of fresh new colors bought in blood. It was frightening almost, to see him loose control like that, but it made them all stop for a moment and each step away from their own grief long enough to at least get a niggling about how wrong they might all have been about Spike.

Maybe that's why he found himself hesitating outside the vampire's crypt even now, the curiosity driving him to seek out someone he would rather have continued to forget. It was so easy, especially over the last couple weeks, not hide nor hair of him showing in the aftermath of Glory's terrible apocalyptic plans. Not since _she_ died. Then again, it might just have been the part of him which wanted to see if Spike had finally stumbled out of their lives for good.

Another beat passed, shifting his weight from foot to foot slightly, then shrugging his shoulders back he mentally said to hell with it and pushed into the dark interior of Spike's home.

The smell was what caught his attention first, the way the musty air, worse then usual, surged and rolled with the draft let in through the door. The way it was like some dark tangent thing, coming hard and fast to clog his senses and choke at his throat. It was musty and stale, the stench of dirt and decay clinging to it with strong, skeletal fingers—the dead were always the stronger species. He coughed slightly, waving a hand before his face in a vain attempt to get the air moving and circulating the way it should, and peered into the gloom. A small round candle flickered low on its wick, almost but not quite yet burned out, valiantly fighting against the creeping shadows of the night and of this place.

He couldn't see far ahead but it didn't _feel_ like he was alone, and feelings like that were something finely honed with someone raised on the living pulsing hellmouth. "Spike?" for a long moment there was not sound, not even his voice echoed here, as if it were a black hole; except it sucked in more then just the light. About to turn—this wasn't a critical job after all—he stopped short when he heard the soft slide of fabrics against rough stonework. Barely a whisper but he heard it, narrowed its source to somewhere on the other side of the great sarcophagus. Walking slowly and more then a little cautiously he wasn't really surprised when he almost tripped over Spike's black clad figure. What did surprise him was that the blonde had actually stayed silent all this time.

"Spike."

Once more there was no reaction and it wasn't as if he could actually tell whether the vampire was awake for not seeing as it was too dark to see his face. So he stood there in the darkness and glared down at the white blonde head; his patience in greater abundance then he would have expected given the situation and the fact that all of their nerves had been running thing for the last several months and worse now.

Finally a slight shift of shoulder let him know he wasn't talking to someone lost instead off in la la land. The head rolled on those shoulders slowly, ever so slowly, looking up at him but not really focusing on anyone point on his face, rambling across the features and over the dark mass of hair he hadn't bothered to cut recently. Grabbing the candle off the stone it rested upon he brought it with him as he crouched in front of Spike, staring into his blank face, searching the unblemished skin for—something. He still didn't know why he was here except that he was.

Narrow features were more so then usual, sunk in and hollowed out, dark circles under listless eyes and those eyes: blue as only true blue can be, drawn in and shuttered but unable to hide everything. Halting he reached out a slightly trembling hand and gently touched one of those razor sharp cheek bones, fingertips sliding over pale skin, flawless to the touch but he could feel they were just a little bit damp. That's when he smelled the tears.

And even that show of weakness, of deep emotion and obvious torment, of _humanity_, didn't explain why he lent in then and gently brushed his own lips against Spike's much cooler ones. Didn't explain why his hand smoothed over the other's face while the other moved in to cup the back of the bleached head. He only registered the soft strangled sound—so quiet—torn from the long pale neck as hands came out to grip at his sides, grasping and clutching desperately at his shirt.

Maybe though, it was when he tasted the burst of salt between their lips that he decided to stay.

END


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